This post is to seek the expert assistance of other webmasters and or Google staff who can help us rectify a manual Google penalty for unnatural links we received last summer. I also think we were hit again with other actions, but I'm not 100% certain. Since getting the penalty, our traffic is down 75% and our Adsense income as well. We have had to let go of staff and are on the verge of bankruptcy and being homeless since this is our only income. I know I'm not alone and there are thousands of people like me.

Yes, we are guilty of some shady SEO because we hired some unreputable SEO's back in 2008-2010 who obviously did not do us any good in the long run with getting us crappy links and also we have thousands of sites who scrape our content. That is our fault and I take 100% responsibility. In the same breathe, we have lots of links from top news. .Gov and .Edu websites. We are trying to clean them up and also the structure of our website.

In the end, it is what it is, but I'm still trying to salvage the website and our business. I'm not looking for woe is me or a pity party, just expert help and advice from some great people to let me know if my website can be saved.

Is there anyone out there that can give us some tips or advice based on my post?

First things first is to go to Search Traffic -> Manual Actions in WMT and copy/paste what you see there over here. That way, everyone's on the same page re: manual actions. If you have a manual action (or several), those are the first priorities.

Google has detected a pattern of artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site. Buying links or participating in link schemes in order to manipulate PageRank are violations of

Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

As a result, Google has applied a manual spam action to loansafe.org/. There may be other actions on your site or parts of your site.

Recommended action

Use the Links to Your Site feature in Webmaster Tools to download a list of links to your site.

Ensure that unnatural links pointing to your site are removed.

When these changes are made, and you are satisfied that links to your site follow Google's Webmaster Guidelines, submit a reconsideration request. If you're unable to remove links pointing to your site, please provide as much detail as possible in your reconsideration request.

If we determine your site is no longer in violation of our guidelines, we'll revoke the manual action.

Like I do not know that and no, I didn't spam my site our of existence. You are obviously of no help and a borderline internet troll who is not here to truly add value to the forum, but add troll comments to people who truly need help.

You are making false accusations Lysis and you know this. My website is not black balled or even completely taken out of Google. If I was what you claim, then Google would have taken more drastic action against my 7 year old website then they did. Hence, it is recoverable and all I'm looking for are experts, not trolls who enjoy kicking people when they are down to help.

Can anyone else help here other than Lysis the poor internet troll with a big black heart who needs a life, but enjoys trolling legit forums and people who need assistance?

So, you haven't built *any* kind of backlink since 2010? And I mean "you" or anyone who works for you or anybody you outsourced work to. And by 'links', I mean *any* kind of link? Because definitely, first thing is to stop building any kind of link.

What have you done to clean up links? You can't just disavow. How many reviews have you requested (and were rejected, I assume, since you still have a penalty. Or did you get the manual action revoked and then reapplied)?

Suzanne

On Friday, May 2, 2014 12:48:16 PM UTC-4, Moe B. wrote:

We have not did any out reach SEO since 2010. About 470,000 of these links were not unnaturally gained, but were linked to or scraped by other webmasters or financial sites.

We have not done any SEO or link building since 2010. We have never cross posted our articles by guest posts or built links ourselves. We also never asked for a paid review etc.

As I mentioned above, about 470,000 plus of these links were made by others through scrapping, feeds etc. Many of these sites are penalized themselves or we cannot get ahold of any webmaster etc. We have been working on this for a year and have not submitted a disavow request because 95% of them we cannot get removed or show much of anything. So we have never been rejected, just taking ranking and earnings.

We have made our spreadsheets, and are stuck at the simple fact that we cannot get 470,000 links removed.

You say you've been working on the penalty for a year and have a spreadsheet. So, this spreadsheet shows your good faith, serious effort at link removal detailing the steps you took (contact details, when you contacted webmasters, the response, etc.)? The disavow tool is for those stubborn links that can't be removed.

Google also wants to know that you know what you did wrong and that you're not going to do it again (and that you've stopped doing it). That 'mea culpa' needs to be included in the response, along with a Google spreadsheet and submitting the disavow file.

If you've done all you can, there's no reason not to submit a review request. Well, some manual actions do expire -- but they can be reapplied. The thing is, even with the removal of the action, you're not going to rank where you were before. You were ranking unnaturally.

Not sure what other kind of help you're looking for then. You seem to know what you're doing.

As an aside: I sincerely hope your SEO services don't include link building. Obviously, you know what happens when you do that...

I'm thankful for Google and the opportunities I have had as a result of this search engine. I'm not looking for empathy, even though our business is suffering and business is tough.Sure it sucks, but I take full responsibility for this and I just have to try to find solutions for my mistakes.

Our admitted guilt of shady SEO is hiring a SEO company who did link building and since it was done by outreach, rather than natural link building, that was shady and we take full responsibility for this. We have not built links in 4 years and all new and authority links etc are natural. But as I mentioned, most of the links we have found were not gained by our link building back from 2010, but by other website owners who scrape our content. It is what it is.

We, LoanSafe.org link to many .Gov sites because we offer free mortgage help and news. Much of this comes from . gov sources. Mortgage Marketing Now is not the website I'm speaking of and that was a new project, but now somewhat of a dead project. The pages were not all built etc. We need to take that website down.

We Create Web Designs is a new venture. It is not really making too much money.

Yes, we have a spreadsheet and we plan to submits for the disavow and penalty removal in the next week or so. I agree with your thoughts and I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything or could do more.

In regards to our SEO services, we really haven't got any clients since it is a new venture, but no, we do not do link building and I plan to use everything I have learned, the good and bad to help people.

Thanks again and I will report back here when I hear back from Google.